Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Heartbreakers

Film quiz: What is this from?

Smoking is part of the fun of being a kid. We just did some tests on some nine-year-olds. After a little puking, well you couldn't drag 'em away from the stuff. Well you're only young once. Why not indulge them, I always say.

Did you guess Hearthbreakers?

You are correct. That 2001 film stars Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt as a mother-daughter con artist team. It is a hilarious film and one of my all time favorites.

The quote above is from Gene Hackman's character. He is a tobacco billionaire. He smokes like a chimney and is always hacking and coughing.

It is a very funny film. Everyone in the cast is just perfect in their role and it's so laugh out loud funny. Like when Sigourney gets Nora Dunne fired as Gene Hackman's maid by making him think she's stealing his cigarettes.

"TV: The Good Whore" (Ava and C.I., The Third Estate Sunday Review):Tuesday found her critiquing the Olympics in some form and back on the
topic of Mitt Romney (she couldn't mention the poor on Monday but had
plenty of time to tear apart Mitt Romney, good little whores know to
dance for the political masters). She was offended, Tuesday, that Mitt
Romney takes campaign donations from 'unsavory' people.

But Penny is in the news. As Trina noted last week in "Boycott Hyatt and other labor issues,"
Penny and her family own the Hyatt hotel chain which is implementing a
new strategy. No longer does Hyatt hire workers for their hotels.
Hiring workers means they have to give them vacation time and discounts
at other hotels and the chance of paying into an insurance program and
maybe investing in a 401K. It's much better (cheaper), Penny Pincher
Penny believes, to instead now fill those jobs via temp agencies. The
workers won't really be temporary but going through a temp agency means
they're paid less (with no raises -- temps don't get raises), don't earn
vacation time, don't get any benefits.

Matthew
Rothschild: You know, you've been what I'd like to call "a witness to
empire." "A Witness to US Empire." You've gone to Iraq during the
war. You've gone to Afghanistan. What's it like to be A Witness to US
Empire?

Medea
Benjamin: It's very sad because it's, uh, an empire that the rest of
the world sees and that the American people don't so you feel kind of
living in a surreal world when you come back to the US and realize the
ignorance of the American people --

Matthew Rothschild: Why don't we see it?

Medea
Benjamin: It's not talked about by our media. Certainly not talked
about by our elected officials except maybe [US House Rep] Ron Paul or
[US House Rep] Dennis Kucinich and we don't even have Dennis talking
about it. It's kind of one of those dirty words. You certainly don't
use the word impearlism. Sometimes, people like Ron Paul will use the
word empire but it's kind of like, you know, just don't talk about that
part of things and it's such a reality that effects every budget in this
country, every part of our lives but people don't understand that we've
got these hundreds and hundreds of bases around the world that we spend
these billions of dollars on -- things that we don't want and we don't
need and people don't want us to have and yet it goes on as if there's
something inexorable about this.

Matthew
Rothschild: And to the extent that it's talked about except by you and
a few others, you know, it's talked about as though it's a benign
empire. There is this whole group of academics who are saying the
United States is [laughing] the first benign empire in the history of
foreign policy or some such.

Medea Benjamin: That's a very twisted definition of what benign means.

PolitiFact, you can't
keep a promise to end the war in 16 months and also follow Bush's
plan. PoliWhore, you can't keep your own campaign promise and "even
kept troops there longer than he pledged during his campaign." Do you
get that?

Do you also get how offensive it is
to Iraqis -- especially after they just saw July become the deadliest
month in two years -- to say that Barack ended the war? The Iraq War is
not over and you really have to have your head up your ass to think
that it is.

PolitiFact and Molly Moorhead, as they delve further, get a little more honest.

They
quote Barack stating in October 2011, "Our troops will definitely be
home for the holidays." And that was a lie. Even PolitiFact notes, "A
small force of a few hundred Marines would remain to help train Iraqi
forces, as well as a large diplomatic contingent." And let's drop back
to the June 19, 2012 snapshot, the day the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released [PDF format warning] "The Gulf Security Architecture: Partnership With The Gulf Co-Operation Council" and where we quote from page 12 of that report:

Kuwait
is especially keen to maintain a significant U.S. military presence. In
fact, the Kuwaiti public perception of the United States is more
positive than any other Gulf country, dating back to the U.S.-led
liberation of Kuwait in 1991. Kuwait paid over $16 billion to compensate
coalition efforts for costs incurred during Desert Shield and Desert
Storm and $350 million for Operation Southern Watch. In 2004, the Bush
Administration designated Kuwait a major non-NATO ally.

*
U.S. Military Presence: A U.S.-Kuwaiti defense agreement signed in 1991
and extended in 2001 provides a framework that guards the legal rights
of American troops and promotes military cooperation. When U.S. troops
departed Iraq at the end of 2011, Kuwait welcomed a more enduring
American footprint. Currently, there are approximately 15,000 U.S.
forces in Kuwait, but the number is likely to decrease to 13,500.
Kuwaiti bases such as Camp Arifjan, Ali Al Salem Air Field, and Camp
Buehring offer the United States major staging hubs, training rages, and
logistical support for regional operations. U.S. forces also operate
Patriot missile batteries in Kuwait, which are vital to theater missile
defense.

When U. S
troops departed Iraq at the end of 2011, Kuawait welcomed a more
enduring American ootprint. Currently, there are approximately 15,000
U.S. forces in Kuwait, but the number is likely to decrease to 13,500.

Molly
Moorhead and PolitiFact want you to know that, okay, yeah, it wasn't
the campaign promise but Michael O'Hanlon is okay with it and he's left
(centrist, right-leaning) and Jim Phillips is okay with it taking longer
too and he's on the right, so, see it's okay that Barack really didn't
stick to what he promised.

A fact checker
checks the fact. A fact checker doesn't offer excuses. Facts are
facts. You can pull 'em out and play with them all day and they're not
going to change. You can wrap you mouth around them and even swallow --
as the folks at PolitiFact are so prone to do -- but that doesn't
change facts. Apparently fact checking was an ambitious task for
PolitiFact and they need someone to come in -- with flash cards -- and
explain to them what facts are before they next attempt to fact check.

As ridiculous and shameless as PolitiFact is Nouri al-Maliki -- thug and prime minister of the ongoing occupation in Iraq. Xinhua reports
that thug and prime minister Nouri al-Maliki declared yesterday, "The
battle with terrorism has ended and the remaining are cells here and
there looking for an opportunity or a gap." This despite the Islamic
State of Iraq recorded threats released July 22nd.
Since then an Iraqi military helicopter has been downed, a Taji prison
has been attacked, a Baghdad counter-terrorism centre (which held a
number of terrorists) have been attacked and July was the deadliest
month in Iraq in two years. In addition, Sunday saw an attempted breakout of the Abu Ghraib prison. Of that attempt, Aseel Kami (China Daily) explains,
" A spokesman for the justice ministry , Haider al-Saadi , said in a
statement that 11 ' dangerous prisoners ' at Abu Ghraib dug down three
meters and had tunneled along 20 meters using a frying pan and part of a
ceiling fan before they were discovered . They had fashioned breathing
apparatus from soft-drink cans stuck end to end . "

Nouri's claim comes as mass arrests continue in Iraq. Ahlul Bayt News Agency reports that 13 have been arrested in Basra today. And it comes, Al Rafidayn reports,
as someone circulates rumors that Moqtada al-Sadr is attempting to
re-arm the Madhi Army (Moqtada denies the rumors). And if the terrorism
is over, why isDar Addustour reporting
that Nouri has just transfered a large number of security forces from
the southern provinces to Baghdad in order to beef up protection of the
Green Zone?

Why were they sleeping outside? Severe heat and lack of dependable electricity. Alsumaria reports that the high in Baghdad for the next five day is expected to be 46 degrees Celsius which is 114.8 degrees Fahrenheit. AFP speaks
with Salahedding provincial council member Adel al-Sumaidai who
explains it was his home and the woman who died was his sister. He
states that an Iraqi military helicopter fired a rocket. AFP identifies
the location for the motor cycle bombing as Baiji and they report 2
Iraqi soldiers were shot dead in Baghdad, 2 government workers were shot
dead in Baghdad (Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Agriculture),
police Col Abdel Monam al-Juburi was shot dead in al-Qayara and 1 person
was shot dead in Mosul. Travis Brecher (Reuters -- link is video) reports 2 Hilla bombings have claimed the lives of 4 children with six more left injured. AP drops back to Monday to note a Hilla mini-bus bombing which claimed 4 lives and left five more people injured. Through yesterday, Iraq Body Count reports at least 70 people have died from violence in Iraq so far this month.

In the latest news on the Kurdish rebels and the Turkish military, Brussels News Agency reports
that 3 Turkish soldiers were kidnapped last night by Kurdish rebels
according to a Turkish governor, Mustafa Toprak, who states they were
taken off a bus and kidnapped. AFP adds
that Toprak states "ground and air operations were under way to find
the kidnapped soldiers." "Kurdish rebels" in these stories usually
means PKK. Aaron Hess (International Socialist Review) described the PKK in 2008,
"The PKK emerged in 1984 as a major force in response to Turkey's
oppression of its Kurdish population. Since the late 1970s, Turkey has
waged a relentless war of attrition that has killed tens of thousands of
Kurds and driven millions from their homes. The Kurds are the world's
largest stateless population -- whose main population concentration
straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria -- and have been the victims of
imperialist wars and manipulation since the colonial period. While
Turkey has granted limited rights to the Kurds in recent years in order
to accommodate the European Union, which it seeks to join, even these
are now at risk."

Chris Marsden (WSWS) notes,
"In the past fortnight, up to 115 Kurdish fighters have been killed in a
south eastern Turkey in military operations, including air strikes
near the town of Semdinli. Sunday saw a counter-offensive in which
Kurdish forces raided three military posts near the Iraq border that
left at least six soldiers and 14 rebels dead. Turkish officials claim
to be combating a 200-strong force of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or
PKK. Kurds make up 17 percent of Iraq's 31 million people, including the
semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, nine percent of Syria's 21
million population, and seven to ten percent of Iran's 75 million
people."

Reuters notes
an overnight bombing targeting the oil pipeline between Iraq's Kirkuk
and Turkey's Ceyhan has "knocked out flows and repairs are expected to
take up to 10 days." Platts adds,
"The latest bombing comes as the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional
Province is gearing up to resume oil exports at a rate of 100,000 b/d.
The KRG had said in a statement last week that it would start exports
during the first week of August but there has been no word since on
whether they have resumed or whether the latest development would force
the resumption of exports to be postponed."

KUNA reports,
"Iraqi Vice Presidential Khudayr Al-Khuzai on Monday decried what he
called flagrant intervention by Turkey in the domestic affairs of
Iraq." Last week, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu visited the
KRG and, on Thursday,
visited Kirkuk which outraged thug and prime minister Nouri al-Maliki
who couldn't stop flapping his gums in yet another attempt by Nouri to
show the world just how insane and unstable he is.

TodayAFP reports,
"Iraq is to 'review' relations with Turkey after Ankara's foreign
minister visited the disputed northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk without
informing Baghdad, government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh said on
Tuesday." Press TV quotes
Nouri's spokesperson stating, "The cabinet studied recent developments
in Turkish-Iraqi relations and decided to review these relations in
light of recent developments in a new cabinet meeting as soon as
possible." Anadolu Agency offers the Turkish government's take on the visit:

Turkish
Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal has said that Turkish Foreign
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's visit to northern Iraq previous week was
beneficial in terms of delivering messages to regional administration in
north of Iraq on coping with terrorism. Spokesman Unal answered the questions on "disislerinesorun" twitter account on Tuesday. Relating
to questions over Turkish FM Davutoglu's historic visit to northern
Iraq a week before, "Mister Davutoglu's visit to Irbil and Kirkuk on
August 1-2 was considerably beneficial in terms of delivering messages
to the regional administration in north of Iraq on dealing with
terrorism," said Unal.

Sure to make Baghdad even angrier is the news from AP that Korea National Oil Corp and Posco Engineering and Construction Ltd. have just signed contracts with the KRG.

Lot
of people want to do business with the KRG. That has to do with
resources but it also has to do with reputation. (You'd think
reputation concerns would have led Nouri al-Maliki to tone it down
already -- not so far.) Matteo Fagotto (alpha magazine) reports:

This
place is growing faster than Dubai. In four or five years Kurdistan
will achieve what the Emirates did in 20. You will not be able to
recognise it," says Cem Saffari. Looking down from the top floor of the
23-storey hotel where he works, overlooking a landscape dotted with
construction cranes and new housing complexes, Saffari doesn't hide his
pride and satisfaction when asked why he moved from a comfortable life
in London to a job in Kurdistan, in the north-eastern region of Iraq.
"It's a growing environment, which I like, and pioneers always win,"
he says. "There is a certain amount of risk in investing here, but we
believe the turnover will be higher."

Saffari
is the Turkish business development manager of the luxury Divan Hotel
in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Open since May, the hotel is
the Turkish group's first investment abroad. With 228 rooms priced from
$500 (Dh1,836) to $15,000 a night, the hotel aims to host the growing
number of business travellers willing to invest in a region that is
experiencing one of the fastest rates of economic growth on earth.

While
the world was dealing with the global economic crisis, Kurdistan
registered 8 per cent growth last year, driven by the exploitation of
its gas and oil reserves estimated at 45 billion barrels. The region's
per-capita GDP, at around $6,000, is 50 per cent higher than in the rest
of Iraq. Erbil is enjoying the lion's share of a boom that has caused
land prices to skyrocket. Housing complexes are springing up in the
empty outskirts of the city, and some cost more than $1 million each.
Shopping malls dot the city's landscape and luxury brands like Porsche
are finally coming in to town. The city's stock exchange is scheduled to
open in the coming months, together with a new business tower and
several major hotels.

The KRG was long ago dubbed "the other
Iraq" by Western media early in the Iraq War. Not only has violence
been lower in the KRG than elsewhere in Iraq, its government has been
more stable and demonstrated a desire to get along with and form ties
with other surrounding countries while, in Baghdad, Nouri can't stop
snarling one conspiracy theory after another about Saudi Arabia or
Turkey or the UAE or Jordan or . . . Hurriyet Daily News explains that the oil the KRG has is also part of the attraction:

With
one-third of Iraq's high-quality oil reserves buried under northern
Iraqi soil, northern Iraq's lucrative oilfields have driven both small
and large oil companies to risk angering Iraq's central government by
entering into deals with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Closer
ties with Western companies and the possibility of exporting oil to
further markets via Turkey are encouraging the KRG to operate even more
independently of the central government. The 45 billion barrels of
proven reserves, according to BP's annual estimates, have enticed the
world's largest oil players, including Exxon Mobile, Total, Chevron and
Gazprom, to make deals with the KRG despite the clear risks emerging
from the lingering dispute between the autonomous administration in
Arbil and the central Baghdad government, which has objected to being
bypassed by recent deals.

Peg Mackey and Andrew Callus (Reuters) add, "Executives
say the move north by the big companies sends a message to Baghdad that
its commercial terms on southern oilfield projects are unattractive,
and that institutional chaos and the slow pace of postwar redevelopment
are problems."

Turning
to the United States where, as Matthew Rothschild and Medea Benjamin
noted, too many important things are never discussed in most media. Guns & Butter is a show that airs on KPFA.
Most of the time. KPFA's been unable/unwilling to air the show since
the middle of July (July 18th). It's supposed to air tomorrow on KPFA
(one p.m. PST). The show has been airing Fridays on WBAI
starting at nine a.m. as they've caught up on what they missed during
their pledge drive. Last Friday, WBAI broadcast the discussion with
activist Priest Frank Morales about the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Excerpt.

Bonnie
Faulkner: With regards to this 2012 National Defense Authorization Act
that President Obama signed, did government agencies request this
legislation?

Father
Frank Morales: No. As a matter of fact, most -- well large sectors of
the military, elements within the Pentagon, within the Congressional
Committees that are devoted to facilitating the Pentagon largess
financially, state adjutant generals who oversee the National Guard
operations in each state, its so-called intelligence professional within
the "intelligence" community, etc. opposed this detention provision in
the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. I mean, obviously the
American people and its representatives are not, at least publicly,
agitating for being detained and doing away with habeas corpus -- namely
the right to be accused in a court of law and shown the evidence of
which you're accused and so forth. So, no, it was not something that
grew out of the call that would have been coming from governmental or
military sectors. [. . .]

Bonnie
Faulkner: Well right and the designation of a US citizen as an enemy
combatant can simply be made by the White House, by who else? I mean,
every one is at risk, right, because that designation could be put on
any of us.

Frank
Morales: Sure. Practically speaking it may come down to a few folks
in the White House who sit around with lists that are handed to them
through various surveillance, Dept of Homeland Security, local CIA
assets working within America, etc., etc. who become targeted by this
apparatus and done so in a legal way. We have to remember that -- not
to sound overly provocative -- but even during the Nazi period --
there's a great book called Hitler's Justice by Ingo Muller which talks
about this -- the Nazis didn't come and just roll away the court system,
push to negate it directly, they created a parrallel legal system. So
that, here in America, through the creation of military tribunals --
cause don't forget, these detained persons, would wind up in that
particular venue -- and those structures created by Bush's executive
orders and military orders back in 2002 and henceforth -- most recent
2009, the Obama people signed the Military Commissions Act which
further consolidates this whole structure, legalizing if you will their
whim after the fact. Because that's the way power works. It doesn't
play by the rules. It creates rules and then sanctions them after the
fact and that's what this military commission structure. So that's --
that's the kind of thing we're looking at here with the NDAA. So it's
important that people not lose sight of the fact that [Judge] Katherine Forrest's decision
is not the end of the road here. We dodged a bullet, so to speak. But
it's very important that we now move pre-emptively as a movement
throughout the country, in locales to de-legitamize and de-militarize
our law enforcement. And we can talk some more about that later.

Bonnie
Faulkner: -- with regards to the NDAA and that American citizens, for
the moment that is, cannot be picked up and held in indefinite detention
with no charges, etc. Now when we were talking about enemy combatants
and that designation, that reminded me of that very famous New York Times
article of a month or two ago about President Obama's Secret Kill List
that he studies on 'Terror Tuesday.' Every morning, he goes through an
actual list of people supposedly in foreign countries but I suppose they
could be anywhere -- American citizens for sure, it's an
assassinations list. And that is how this American citizen in Yemen, [Anwar] al-Awlaki was actually assassinated by drones, right?

Frank
Morales: Yeah, the Obama administration, as I said, the attempt by the
administration to designate American citizens for detention without
trial -- which is a naked violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments
of the Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure and the
guarantee of a trial -- we need to remember was preceded by this
administration's "resolve" to assassinate at will Americans abroad and
place them on a Kill List and eliminate them according to the New York
Times, as you mentioned, secret kill list article on May 29th of this
year. The article in the New York Times speaks in terms of the
president and his advisors having made it clear that they have the
authority to "order the targeted killing of an American citizen in a
country with which the United States was not at war, in secret and
without the benefit of a trial." Now the Justice Dept's Office of Legal
Counsel rationalized such a move in a lengthy memo, justifying the
extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment's guarantee
of Due Process applied, it could be satisifed by internal deliberations
in the Executive Branch. Well according to what we've learned later,
these internal deliberations allowed for Mr. Obama to give his approval
and the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated on September 2011 along
with an associate, Samir Khan, an American citizen who is not even on
the target list but happened to be traveling with Mr. al-Awlaki.

The
lackluster jobs and unemployment numbers released Friday contain a
warning for America that is being missed by a media obsessed with their
impact on President Obama's election chances, according to Jill Stein,
presidential nominee of the Green Party.

"Our
economy is indeed floundering. It's not delivering for the American
people. Mitt Romney is right on that. But we need to start a serious
discussion that goes beyond whether this gives an edge to Mitt Romney in
attacking the President. The sickness of our economy is directly
attributable to misguided economic policies pursued by Republican George
Bush and Democrat Barack Obama, who both consistently favored an
economic system that is driving America into poverty."

"Romney
doesn't have a single credible solution. He just urges blind faith in
trickle down policies that have failed time after time. And President
Obama's approach is to keep the whole failing system going toward an
ultimate meltdown that we won't be able to fix. We are in serious
trouble if we don't recognize that both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are
leading us toward disaster."

Stein
explained her economic approach as follows: "Unemployment is a cancer
that is destroying communities and sapping the lifeblood of our economy.
The urgency to deal with it just isn't there in Washington. Both
Democrats and Republicans fire public employees and cancel government
contracts. Then they endlessly wait for some rich person to create
decent jobs. It's not just the delay that is disastrous. A lot of the
money going to the wealthy investors is used to move jobs overseas or to
automate factories to eliminate jobs. This trickle-down thinking has to
end."

"In contrast, our Green New Deal uses direct job creation
to end unemployment. We will create 25 millions jobs. We will give
communities that are hardest hit by unemployment the green light to
create the type of jobs they need in the quantities they need. Every
unemployed person that we put back to work in this way will give a
stimulus to the economy. The immediate result will be to end the
Bush/Obama recession immediately and decisively."

"It concerns me
that the Obama stimulus plans are not effectively targeted to the urban
areas where rampant unemployment is undermining the health of
communities and creating social decay that will take generations to
repair. This is an emergency. Building bridges in suburbia is fine, but
if we lose these communities we will be paying the price for decades.
The Green New Deal goes directly to where unemployment is worst with
enough new jobs to stop the bleeding. The Obama/Romney approach leaves
the targeting of investments up to self-serving CEO's, and that is
usually a disaster for our distressed communities."

"We also need
to start talking about wages, a topic that you'll find in Green Party
discussions but which is carefully avoided in the Obama/Romney dialogue.
Americans deserve a pay raise. Worker productivity has risen, but the
increased wealth thus created has gone into the pockets of the
economic elite, and hasn't been reflected in increased wages. Younger
workers are struggling under two-tier wage systems which amount to
intergenerational discrimination. As the cost of living rises, Americans
are being pushed out of the middle class."

"Obama broke his
promise to raise the federal minimum wage. As a result, inflation has
reduced the effective minimum wage by over 27%, which is a cruel burden
on low income workers. I support an immediate increase of the minimum
wage to $10/hour, which would just about make up for the pay cuts
imposed by inflation. And I support movement toward a national living
wage guarantee, so that the minimum wage becomes a wage on which
everyone can earn a livelihood. It's time for a President who will stand
with workers and with organized labor as they seek a fair share of the
wealth that their work is creating. I will be such a President."

There
have been a few people who have been appalled by our candidacy thinking
that we may "take votes away from Obama" and "cause Romney to win" and
there are responses to that one:

Barack Obama does not own your vote.

If you care about peace, justice and economic equality, he has not earned your vote.

If Obama loses this November it's because he sucks and his presidency has been a failure for the 99% and a windfall for the 1%

Besides,
historically, after the US has constantly bounced from
Democrat-Republican-Democrat-Republican-Democrat, etc., haven't you kind
of noticed already that it really doesn't matter very much who is
president?

It's the cyst-em of control that needs to be overthrown and socialist revolution can do that!Barr/Sheehan
2012 have two very important people to thank: Cat Woods, a member of
the PandFP who worked so hard to get all the ducks in a row and former
Georgia Congresswoman and GPUSA presidential candidate, Cynthia
McKinney, for keeping the dream of Roseanne for President alive.Go to www.RoseanneforPresident2012.org for more information about the campaign.